Topic: John Zorn should take Orphaned Land under his wing Posted: April 19 2009 at 23:47

To put you in context, Orphaned Land is an rather progressive metal
band from Israel. They've been incorporating elements from
middle-eastern and traditional Jewish music in their sound since their
beginnings. To tell the truth, it's their trademark.

John Zorn is that crazy jazz saxophonist, founder of experimental
jazz-rock band Naked City and producer/promoter of Mr. Bungle (amongst many other things). Like the
members of Orphaned Land, Zorn is Jewish, but most importantly, he is
an advocate of avant-garde music.

I believe Orphaned Land has a lot of potential. I personally enjoy their music.
Unfortunately, their sound (by this I mean the production, not the
songs) sucks. Moreover, their aesthetics are kitsch and inconsistent. Their albums present various images of eagles, crosses, stars of David, snakes, triangles... Yes, it is supposed to represent the band's lyrics, but, I mean, what
more? An image of the prophet Muhammad?

In order to make of Orphaned Land a thriving band, John Zorn should
sign them to his avant-garde label, Tzadik. As a matter of fact, he
already signed a lot of, in my opinion, less talented experimental metal acts. That Porcupine Tree dude was a bad choice. To prove my point, think of ORwarriOR... The title is awful and, secondly, it's not even out yet.

Yes you are right. But every musician needs directions. Think of Miles
Davis and Teo Macero for example. Similarly, you can think of ECM.
Manfred Eicher gives the artists the chance to fully express
themselves, yet you can always tell it's ECM when you hear the record.

In short, no. Orphaned Land are a progressive metal act that compose songs in the traditional progressive metal vein but, because they are based in Isreal, incorporate a fair few Middle Eastern and Jewish themes into their music as well as the jazz and classical that most prog metal bands try, and thats a pretty flimsy connection to make between the the two. They basically have nothing in common with the avant garde projects that John Zorn either works on or supports through Tzadik records.

Well, just recently a Tzadik musician named Jamie Saft released Black Shabbis on which rather straightforward folk-influenced metal music was featured. However, you reminded me of the fact that Orphaned Land members still live in Israel. It doesn't help when you want to enlarge your audience and sign with a New-York based (I believe) record label.

They are already signed to Century Media - one of the biggest independant metal labels - as a Progressive Death metal band I would imaging CM are better placed to market and promote them than Tzadik. The next album is currently in production (they are posting studio dairy reports on the Ultimate Metal band forum) and due for release in the autumn with the final mix to be done by Steven Wilson - the Steven Wilson tag-line is also going to give them more exposure to the right audience.

"You know what uranium is, right?Itís this thing called nuclear weapons. And other things. Like lots of things are done with uranium. Including some bad things.But nobody talks about that."

You cannot post new topics in this forumYou cannot reply to topics in this forumYou cannot delete your posts in this forumYou cannot edit your posts in this forumYou cannot create polls in this forumYou cannot vote in polls in this forum